


Zone of Truth

by ikonnx



Category: Devilman (Anime & Manga), Devilman: Crybaby
Genre: F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-04 16:48:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13368954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ikonnx/pseuds/ikonnx
Summary: Coffee shop AU where everything's the same, except nothing's the same. Akira is a college student. Ryo, who works at the aforementioned coffee shop, seems to have a hard time not saying what's on his mind.This is an entirely, 100% serious fic. Don't like, don't read





	1. milk is evil and here's why

Every morning Akira went to the same coffee shop, on his way to the same class, to get the same cup of coffee. And every morning, this same cup of coffee was, somehow, made incorrectly.There wasn’t anywhere else to get coffee. The only other place, which used to be run by a nice little family, had closed down.

“We were bought out,” said the owner. “Some rich kid paid us to close so _his_ new shop wouldn’t have competition.”

“How horrible!” Akira exclaimed. He figured the building was looking a little dark to be in business. Also, all the chairs and tables were missing. And the coffee. There were just a lot of boxes stacked all over the room. Honestly, looking back on it, the sign on the door had read CLOSED FOR BUSINESS, but he had opened it and asked, quite loudly, into this dim, box-filled space, “Where’s the coffee?”

He had dug himself in this hole and now he had to live with it.

Anyway, he exclaimed, “How horrible!”

“Horrible?” repeated the owner with a wrinkle of his furry brows. “Kid, with all the money we just got, we’re moving to the French countryside! In fact, you’re in front of one of my suitcases, also could you leave? We’re kinda in the middle of packing.”

After the door closed on his face, Akira was left to find another place for coffee. And so, he found _A Coffee Shop Name_. That was the name of it, as if the owner didn’t have time to name it. Akira thought it was actually quite creative and kind of meta, and because he wasn’t quite creative himself, he admired it. It was also new. Which probably had nothing to do with anything, especially not any prior events! This was a completely unrelated, new coffee shop with a rushed name. How amazing! His best friend Miki started working there, and of course, he would visit her at work. While there, he’d get coffee, and it always tasted pretty good, so he never saw any issue with it.

But then the Weird Blonde Kid started working there.

Miki used to work mornings. But as soon as Weird Blonde Kid arrived, the schedules got switched, and now the only face Akira saw in the morning on his way to class was not Miki’s shining, bright smile, but the Weird Blonde Kid’s pale, blank expression.

See, Akira got the very same thing every morning. And every morning, this Weird Blonde Kid would stare him dead in the eyes, unblinking, nod at his order, and get it completely wrong.

Once, he made it without espresso (Akira found this out when he fell asleep in class. As he relied heavily on caffeine to make him a responsible adult and tended to snore like a poorly trained animal, it was _very_ troubling for everyone around him).

One day his order came and it wasn’t even coffee. “Vanilla frap-a-whatever for Akira,” said Weird Blonde Kid.

There were other people in the shop, yes, but they were all on their phones or otherwise paying attention. The drink wasn’t for any of them. Plus, Weird Blonde Kid _had_ said his name, Akira went up to the counter. “Um, hi,” he began. “This isn’t what I ord—”

“Here you go, have a nice day,” said Weird Blonde Kid, shoving it in his hand.

Another time, Akira was delivered his drink, except with whipped cream on top. “Why is there whipped cream?” Akira asked.

The boy stared at him. “Because it’s coffee.”

Akira was left to ponder all that he knew about coffee, the nature of cocoa beans, and the elusive dairy that was the swirling cone of whipped cream on top of his drink, and through what detailed nature of mathematics, science, and logic, those three things were inexplicably connected.

The whipped cream tasted good though, so he wasn’t incredibly annoyed that particular time. Still, it was beginning to grow stale, so one day he rushed up, determined to get things done correctly this time.

He spoke very clearly and with purpose, leaning forward enunciating every syllable. “I am or-der-ing. A sm-all bl-ack coffee. With _cream_. And no _milk_ ,” Akira said.

Weird Blonde Kid nodded. There was no expression on his face. He must have been listening intently.

“Can you please repeat that back to me?” Akira asked.

Weird Blonde Kid didn’t even react. “Small black coffee. With cream. And no milk,” he recited, monotone, in that way he always spoke.

Akira nodded. Finally! Weird Blonde Kid turned, made the coffee, and returned to the counter. “Peppermint white chocolate mocha for Akira!” he shouted. Akira was speechless.

On one of those final days, Weird Blonde Kid handed him a cup that looked right. It was in a normal brown Styrofoam cup, with a plain black lid. And Weird Blonde Kid looked him dead in the eye as he outstretched it to him.

Akira took it—and found that it felt quite, well, light. And he couldn’t smell anything either. So he opened the top and found—nothing. Absolutely nothing. There was no coffee. There was no _anything._ “What…is this?” he asked.

Weird Blonde Kid didn’t blink. He never blinked. “Didn’t you order a cup.”

Akira ran out of the cafe. Or perhaps sprinted was a better word. He couldn’t take it anymore. He just couldn’t!

On that last day, that very Final day, he looked the boy in the eye. “I will never come here again,” he said. “Unless you get my order right.”

Weird Blonde Kid stared at him. With each visit, Akira was growing increasingly unnerved by his pale blue eyes.

“I just want. A black coffee,” he said. “Small. Nothing fancy. Just a bit of cream. No milk. Please. _Please._ I am _begging_ you. I have not had coffee for the past forty-eight days, and for forty-eight days—yes, I’ve been counting, I _saw_ your eyebrow twitch up, please don’t just put it back down like I wouldn’t notice—I have had to live with your increasingly weird and creative ways of misunderstanding my order. Please, _please._ Just give me. My coffee.”

Weird Blonde Kid was like a statue. “Two seventy-five, please,” he said.

Akira handed over the money. And then, after a short wait, he was given his drink. The cup looked right. It wasn’t empty, he could feel it. He nodded at Weird Blonde Kid. And Weird Blonde Kid smiled. He actually looked normal when he smiled.

Akira sipped his drink and—huzzah! It tasted fine! He SCREAMED to the sky, and actually got so excited he pumped his fists in the air, except one hand was holding his coffee, so a bunch of it spilled out everywhere, but he didn’t even feel it—

Actually…

Actually, he couldn’t feel anything.

Oh.

Oh, that wasn’t good.

Akira dropped to the ground, and even though logically the cup should have fallen behind him because of gravity, there was a dramatic breeze that blew the cup in front of him, and yes the cup was very heavy because it was filled with coffee but it was quite a strong breeze.

And as everything went fuzzy and blurry and just plain Not Right, but not so Not Right that Akira couldn’t read, he saw the words CREAM AND MILK on the side of the cup.

Milk.

The one thing he was incredibly, ridiculously, allergic to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> spoiler: he ain't dead yet


	2. it's not the pain it's the surprise

Akira woke in a cold, stark white room. White walls, white ceiling, white covering his body, white light streaming in from the window—and cold, so much bitter, sharp cold, seeping in from everywhere.

“Oh my god,” he whispered to himself. “I never imagined the afterlife would be…cold.”

“This is a hospital,” said a scratchy voice.

Akira snapped his head to the left. A middle-aged woman with a faded orange dye job in brightly colored scrubs was adjusting something on his IV. Oh. Perhaps this _was_ a hospital.

“So, I’m not dead?” Akira asked. “And this isn’t heaven?”

“Considering my depressing paycheck,” said the woman without looking at him. “I think it’s better to call it hell.”

“How horrible,” Akira muttered to himself.

She did some more nurse-y stuff that Akira didn’t understand as she continued to speak in her drawling, rough tone. “You collapsed in an alley and some random hobo called the police.”

“Some hobo?” Akira repeated. How could that have happened?

“Yep,” said the nurse.

(The truth of the situation was that, as Akira had collapsed right in front of the shop, Weird Blonde Kid felt he had to do something. Having a collapsed person right in front of the door was bad for business, so he did all he could and dragged Akira into the alley instead. Then he went back to work, as leaving an abandoned counter was also bad for business. However, a passing hobo was lucky enough to run across Akira’s unconscious body. It was lucky for the hobo because he pickpocketed all of Akira’s money and valuables—and then he found Akira’s phone. It was a Nokia. The hobo called 911 on Akira’s phone and told them to come get Akira, and then took Akira’s phone too because hobos don’t have phones.

And that’s what you missed on Glee.)

“Where’s my phone?” asked Akira.

“I’m not paid enough to bother answering that,” said the nurse. “Just wait here. The doctor will be in soon.”

She disappeared into the stark white hall. Akira was beginning to think that woman was sadly mistaken. He was pretty sure he died, and simply…come back to life, somehow. No one could tell him he was wrong. This situation was completely out of the ordinary and not some basic example of an allergic reaction.

Even though the nurse said the doctor would be in, the person who walked in next was none other than Weird Blonde Kid himself. Donned in blue scrubs and his usual blank expression, if Akira hadn’t known about his dastardly deeds, he would have been completely fooled.

Akira let out an overdramatic gasp. “YOU! You’re the doctor?!”

“Of course. I work here,” said Weird Blonde Kid.

Oh. He must have been a very hard-working individual then, having so many jobs. Probably to make ends meet. It was quite admirable, but Akira was not one to be distracted, as he was very intelligent.

“How many jobs do you _have_?” Akira asked.

The boy didn’t even blink. “We don’t have time for that.”

“You certainly had time to kill me!”

“You’re not _dead_.”

Akira huffed. “Yeah, people keep saying that, but I know the truth.”

Weird Blonde Kid huffed, rolling his eyes. “ _God you’re an idiot but at least you’re a damn fine idiot_ ,” he blurted, almost in a voice that wasn’t quite his, in a voice that had—my god— _emotion._

“What?” Akira blurted.

“What?” asked Weird Blonde Kid, in that same flat, robotic tone. Almost like he had no idea. How couldn’t he? He just said a whole sentence, surely he couldn’t have missed that.

But he held out his hand as if nothing had happened. “Give me your arm.”

Akira pressed his arm protectively against his chest. “So you can finish the job? No thank y—AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

Weird Blonde Kid had reached over and ripped the IV out.

Akira had _screamed_ —actually it didn’t hurt, it was just the _surprise_. And later, when recounting this story, he would expertly edit out the part where he screamed because that just wasn’t a necessary detail for anyone to know.

An alarm went off because all hospitals have alarms for these type of things, to raise tension in situations like this, when action needs to start because there’s been too much comfortable chit-chat.

Weird Blonde Kid leaned into Akira, his expression the same unfeeling blankness as always—but he smelled of something soft, and clean, and…oddly pleasant. “Listen,” he said. “I can’t stay for long, but I need you to take this, it’s of the utmost importance.”

Weird Blonde Kid said opened Akira’s hand, placed a folded-up piece of white paper in his palm, looked him deeply in the eyes, and said, “ _You have pleasingly soft hands_.”

“WHAT?!” Akira screamed, because there was that voice again! The one with emotion!

And yet again Weird Blonde Kid didn’t even react. He straightened, his brow furrowing only in the slightest, and Akira was beginning to wonder if he was some kind of Twilight vampire (Akira had been a very big Twilight fan growing up, so he knew the signs and symptoms to look for in a vampire).

“ _I MUST FLEE_!” Ryo shouted in his Emotion Voice™.

The nurse was suddenly in the doorway. Her gaze landed straight on Ryo. “Oh, what the hell—“ she whirled back around to the hallway. “JOHN, THAT BLONDE KID IS IN HERE PRETENDING TO BE A DOCTOR AGAIN!”

Weird Blonde Kid wasted no time. IV needle still in hand, ran to the window. _What is he doing?!_ Akira thought with alacrity. He stabbed the window with the teeny tiny IV needle and—like they lived in some weird realm of reality where logic did not exist—stabbed it into the glass of the window, which shattered and rained down into the street.

And like an Olympic swimmer arching their form into a pool, Weird Blonde Kid dove out of the window.

And he was gone.

Because that’s what happens when people jump out of windows.

There was a great commotion in Akira’s hospital room after that, with security and nurses and whatnot, but they mostly forgot he was there for some reason.

But it was lucky for Akira, because he had a lot to think about. How had he heard Weird Blonde Kid say things that the Weird Blonde Kid didn’t even know he’d said aloud? It made no sense. Unless…

Of course. There was only one explanation. Akira had died, and dying had given him the ability to _read minds._

He balled up his fist with Anime Resolve, thinking of how he would only use this newfound power for good and not evil—and heard the crinkle of the paper in his fist. Ah yes, Weird Blonde Kid had given him something before he made his great escape. But that piece of paper…what could it be? It was obviously something important.

Akira opened it up. And there, written in scrawled handwriting, was a phone number.

_CALL MEEEEEE XOXO --RYO_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic is supposed to be filled with TAZ references but so far I've only managed one (1) SU reference I'm sorry class


End file.
